Kings Island: A Ride Through Time

By Evan Ponstingle

In 1972, one of America's most beloved theme parks swung open its gates for the first time. Kings Island was the latest in the post-Disneyland boom, and it was big, beautiful, and instantly successful. Who could forget their first sight of the magnificent Eiffel Tower after passing through the turnstiles? Or the colorful flags flying proudly over the Royal Fountain? Now nearly fifty years later, the park is as amazing and grand as ever. Read the story behind this magical playground and how it has changed over time. Filled with personal recollections of park officials who were there, Kings Island: A Ride Through Time offers a first-hand account that is as fascinating as the attractions we've loved all our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rivershore Press
• Release date: Apr 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224171989

Book preview

PROLOGUE

In 1867 a man by the name of James Bell Parker bought a portion of farmland on the banks of the Ohio River near Cincinnati that belonged to the late Thomas Whetstone. Parker began growing apples and strawberries and raising hogs on the property; within a year people began holding picnics in Parker’s shady apple orchard. Word spread and the popularity of the picnics in Parker’s groves increased, especially after steamboats began bringing excursion parties from Cincinnati. Over the years concessionaires began setting up sideshows, theaters, and games to entertain those picnicking in the orchard; by the 1880s a mule-powered carousel and dance platform had been added.

James Parker sold his grove in 1886 to steamboat captains William F. McIntyre and Jacob D. Hegler, who focused on transforming the daytime picnic excursion into a large summer resort. On June 4 ownership of the property was passed to the Cincinnati Steamboat Excursion Company, with Hegler named as president and McIntyre appointed as secretary-treasurer. Hegler decided that Parker’s Grove should be a showplace and named the new resort Coney Island after the famed amusement center in New York. The new Coney Island officially opened June 21 with rides and a shooting gallery. The park’s first roller coaster was added soon afterwards, a switchback railway called the Hegler Coaster.

Just two years later Coney Island was sold to William E. Hutton, who transferred the park to the newly formed Coney Island Company. Levi H. Brooks was named the new president. Brooks made several changes to the property, including an expansion of the roller coaster. Rides, attractions, and restaurants were added over the years, including new coasters that were introduced in 1902, 1911, and 1913. In the 1920s the large Skyrocket coaster was built, designed by the famous coaster designer John A. Miller.

The 1920s were an exciting period of growth for Coney. In 1924 Rudolph Hynicka and George Schott formed Coney Island Inc. and purchased the park. The second Island Queen boat that served as transportation between downtown Cincinnati and Coney Island was christened on April 18, 1925, replacing one that had burned in 1922. Until 1947 when the ship was destroyed in an explosion, the Island Queen was a popular and iconic ship that set the scene for the Coney Island experience. One of Coney’s most famous features, Moonlite Gardens, was added in 1925. Sunlite Pool, which still to this day is the world’s largest recirculating pool, opened on May 22 of that same year. Two Philadelphia Toboggan Company-designed coasters, the Wildcat and Twister, opened in 1926; that’s when Coney Island gained its famous tagline America’s Finest Amusement Park.

After the sudden death of George Schott in 1935, his son Edward was named park president, overseeing Coney’s continued rapid growth and popularity. 1947 saw the addition of the park’s signature attraction—the Shooting Star roller coaster, a radically altered and redesigned version of the 1937 Clipper coaster.

By the 1950s Coney Island had such a tremendous reputation that even Walt Disney stopped by while he was researching ideas for his Disneyland project. Walt was extremely impressed with Coney’s cleanliness and landscaping, two features that would become staples at his own park. He also found encouraging support for his ideas from Coney’s management, a welcome change from the naysayers that had dominated his quest thus far.

Following the death of Edward Schott, Ralph Wachs, the son-in-law of George Schott, was named Coney Island’s president in 1962.

Coney Island was a tradition. It was a tremendously popular park and had become a signature staple of Cincinnati's culture. It was also widely recognized as the greatest traditional amusement park in the United States. No one could have guessed that a flood in 1964 would change the course of Coney Island and Cincinnati’s amusement park scene forever.

PART I

TAFT BROADCASTING

WE’RE GONNA MOVE THE PARK

Situated along the banks of the Ohio River, Coney Island was especially prone to flooding. In 1964 the fourth highest flood in the park’s history struck, cresting at 66.2 feet. Gary Wachs, vice president of Coney Island and son of park president Ralph Wachs, went out and surveyed the damage the flood had wrought.

I thought, ‘I don’t want to spend the rest of my career pushing flood mud and trying to stay competitive with the industry and other parks,’ Wachs recalls. Every time we made improvements, it became more vulnerable. I used to have an expression, ‘You can stand the flood in your basement but not your living room.’ And we were a living room!

Another issue Wachs started thinking about during the recovery from the flood was expansion. Coney Island was not only flood prone, but landlocked as well. We had maybe 160 acres, but we were landlocked by Kellogg Avenue, the Ohio River, River Downs race track on one side, and California, the community, and homes on the other. We couldn’t really grow any larger. This was a significant issue as the age of the family-owned traditional park was giving way to the new wave of theme parks following the opening of Disneyland in 1955 and Six Flags Over Texas in 1961.

They really spruced up the industry and frankly, as much as I love and adore Coney Island—and it was the top of its peer group—we were all practicing habits that were dying out and getting old. And here came Disney and he said, ‘Hey, I want to refresh this industry. I want clean parks, I want well-landscaped parks, I want to use refreshing, wholesome college kids.’ These two issues weighed heavily on Wachs’ mind in the days and weeks following the flood of 1964. Gary Wachs knew that Coney Island could not keep operating as it was. Coney had to move.

Gary Wachs drew this diagram depicting where Coney Island (circled in middle) was in comparison to the evolving amusement park industry. Courtesy of Gary Wachs.

Wachs recalled, I started thinking, ‘How do I go about this? How do I talk to members of our own little family corporation, including my own father? How do I sell this idea to our own company? Because if I can’t get our company behind me, I can’t do this.’ Gary figured he would have to sell the idea of relocating the park to the heads of each division in the park, his father, as well as the chairman of the board, Charles Sawyer. Sawyer, who had been President Harry S. Truman's Secretary of Commerce, was the largest single stockholder of Coney Island.

He began developing a presentation to persuade the board and his father to move the park. Obviously, we should move because of the floods and the fact that we have no land, but the third major reason we should move is our competitive market, argued Wachs. Coney Island fed off the markets of Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Indianapolis, Lexington, and Louisville. We owned it [that market] at the time, but what if a competitor comes into our market? We’re in trouble.

First, he laid out the basic concept of the new park. Wachs knew it had to be a heavily themed, immersive environment to compete with any potential modern theme parks that could be built in the region. Gary roughly mapped out a children’s area, an historical area inspired by Cincinnati’s heritage as a river town, a representation of the Coney Island of days gone by, and a grand entrance of a European boulevard, influenced by a 1963 trip to Europe. The entire park would adapt Disneyland’s hub-and-spoke design into a four-leaf clover.

Wachs next contacted a friend who went to Wharton Business School to assemble a financial report estimating projected attendance and cost for building the new park. I had the concept down, I had the dreamer side down, and I had the financial side down, Wachs recalled. Then I had to have the rationale side down and the support side; why are we doing this? I literally developed a two-hour presentation. Gary first tried out his presentation on Coney Island’s department heads, without his father. When I got up in front of everyone, I had two easels that I showed my renderings on and some other things, and I go through this whole thing of here’s why we have to move, Wachs said. I went through the history of Coney Island, I went through the history of our old industry and the coming, new industry. I got into our market area and I said, ‘We’re vulnerable and we’ve got to [move].’

They looked at me as a young guy and I thought some of them rightly thought, ‘Wait a minute Gary, we’re doing damn well. We’re successful. Every time we put something in new, the park’s growing.’ But the more I talked about that [moving the park], the more I sold them on the idea.

Gary next convinced Ralph Wachs, Gary’s father and president of Coney Island. I’d sold my father enough that he let me keep going on this project, continued Wachs. He didn’t place any restrictions on exploring moving the park. Somebody else could have said, ‘Gary, you just stick to running the park’ or assisting or whatever. I was fortunate.

With both the department heads and the park president on board with the idea of building a new park, the last person Gary had to convince was the board chairman, Charles Sawyer. He was a guy we had a great relationship with. As long as we were successful, anything we wanted to do he would rubber stamp [it]. He said, ‘Keep going guys, I think you’re doing a great job.’ He would say that board meeting after board meeting after board meeting. So you couldn’t ask for a better chairman of the board. If we wanted to put in nineteen new roller coasters, he’d say ‘Do it!’ Sawyer loved Coney Island the way it was, and Gary Wachs knew that selling the idea to him would be the toughest obstacle up to that point. I said, ‘Mr. Sawyer, let me put you in a plane. I want to show you the future of the industry. I want to show you what’s coming and if we don’t do it, we’re going to be in serious trouble.’ So Wachs and Sawyer flew down to Six Flags Over Georgia during its opening year of 1967.

[I] took him to the first real live show Mr. Sawyer had ever seen, recalled Gary of their trip to Atlanta. They had five standing ovations; it was Americana at its best. I thought it would make a lasting impression on him…I took him down there and he processed the whole thing, but never seemed to get excited. Then I got him back to Cincinnati and gave him my two-hour presentation.

Wachs got Sawyer up in his office, set up his easel, and began his spiel, talking about the effects of floods on Coney Island; I had a whole section on all the floods from 1925 up to that point. It’s a thesis about that thick [gesturing with his hands], why we ought to move! I went through the whole thing with him. ‘Here’s our market area Mr. Sawyer, here’s where we’re successful in Indianapolis and cities like that. We’re ahead of our game, we now control our own destiny. But Mr. Sawyer, what happens if somebody knocks on the door?’

Well I go through this whole thing, and I’ll never forget his first reaction. Two hours of me talking, and when I was finished I said ‘Well?’ And he said, ‘If we move, what happens to my dividend?’

I knew at his age that Coney Island was his playtoy, and he didn’t want anything to happen to it! I had this expression, ‘Old men don’t look down the road. Young men look down the road.’ So I understood I was talking to an old gentleman. The future didn’t seem to concern him.

Wachs felt as though he was at a dead end. Charles Sawyer was not going to give up his playtoy, no matter how the amusement industry was changing and no matter how many floods Coney Island had to weather. Wachs decided the next step would have to be drastic.

I was on the board too; I was going to call a meeting of everybody, including my father [and] Mr. Sawyer, and go through this presentation—which the board had not yet seen—and that was going to be a showdown, Gary remembers. Are we moving or not? Let’s vote on it. I talked to my cousin who had Coney Island stock. I went through this with some of our key stockholders and they all thought, ‘Gary, let’s move, let’s do it.’ Now, that board meeting would have been…I don’t know if I would have still remained with the company after that. It was a big risk. But I didn’t care, I had been working on this for four or five years and had gone this far, so I was going for broke. And guess what? That board meeting never happened. Why? Because out of the blue, like a lightning strike, [came] Fess Parker.

FRONTIER WORLDS

On September 9, 1968 Fess Parker, the famous actor who played Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone on television, announced he would be building a massive theme park called Frontier Worlds in Boone County, Kentucky, a short drive from Coney Island. The 360-acre, heavily themed $13.5 million park would feature 20 super attractions and themed areas representing frontiers from the past and future, according to the Cincinnati Post. While the initial development was for 360 acres, Parker had optioned 1,400 acres where I-71 and I-75 split, with the remaining land designated for hotels and shopping. The park was scheduled to open in 1970. Wachs knew at once that Parker was serious.

I panicked, Gary admitted. I knew it was do or die time. I went to my father and said, ‘Dad, if that guy opens that park, Coney Island is either out of business or we’re going to become a second-rate amusement park, because we won’t have the funds to do all the wonderful things [we want to do]. I don’t want to live like that.’

Ralph suggested to his son that he should consider working for Six Flags Over Texas. Gary instead decided to search for a large, corporate partner to provide financial backing. And he knew just where to look for one.

TAFT BROADCASTING ENTERS THE PICTURE

Coney Island ran many promotions and special events, one of which was called WKRC Day. WKRC was a Cincinnati television station owned by Cincinnati-based media conglomerate Taft Broadcasting Company.

Taft Broadcasting "got the idea that they wanted to do Pops concerts in the afternoon at Moonlite Gardens. We would set up card tables on the dance floor with checkered tablecloths and candles, and famous concert people like Arthur Fiedler would come in from Boston. They’d have many wonderful people come in and give these Pops concerts, Wachs explained. They were successful and very popular, and we’d go up on the balcony of Moonlite Gardens and enjoy the concert."

Wachs always sat with Lawrence Bud Rogers, president of Taft Broadcasting Company. I got to know him, and because of that I thought I’m going to contact him. I’m going to call this guy, tell him who I am, and say I'd like some time with him.

I said, ‘Bud, I want to come see you. Do you have some time?’ He’s a nice fellow and responded, ‘Sure Gary, come on down.’ Rogers, who was on a call when Wachs arrived, assumed Gary wanted to discuss doing a fundraiser for the Cincinnati branch of the United Appeal charity. In reality, Wachs was hoping to sell Taft Broadcasting on the idea of helping him to build a new Coney Island. Gary laughed, So I go in his office and I'm bringing all my stuff for my presentation. And he got wide-eyed; he didn’t know what the hell I was peddling!

I'm setting up this stuff, getting ready; he hangs up, looks at me and says, ‘What can I do for you? Why are you here?’ ‘Bud, how much time do you have?’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t know, go on, start to tell me.’ ‘Bud, I am here to talk to you about a merger with Coney Island to build a new theme park.’ ‘Tell me about it.’ Two hours later I was finished. I gave him the whole thing. He didn’t jump up and down, he didn’t say you’re crazy. Again, this is a lot to process! So he said, ‘Alright. Let me get back to you.’ That was about the extent of his remarks. It wasn’t get out of here, it wasn’t you’re crazy, it wasn’t oh, let’s go tomorrow, it was a process kind of thing. I said okay and I thought that was—you know, I'll take that for the first meeting.

Two weeks later Rogers asked to meet with Wachs for lunch at the Netherland Plaza Hotel in downtown Cincinnati. He said, ‘Gary, the first thing I want to ask you: how does your father feel about this?’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t have talked to you, Bud, without my father’s blessing.’ Okay, that’s important. We didn’t have a long lunch because I had given him my pitch.

In that two-week interim, Rogers had spoken to Taft Broadcasting’s new CEO, Charles S. Mechem, Jr. As it turns out, Mechem, who was Taft’s attorney prior to the sudden 1967 death of Hulbert Taft, had been interested for several years in building a theme park.

CHARLIE MECHEM’S IDEA

Mechem recalls, After we had acquired Hanna-Barbera [cartoon studio in 1965] and after I had become CEO, I began thinking of how we could leverage the Hanna-Barbera characters—involve them and simply put them on a bigger stage, even bigger than they were on TV. Obviously, the roadmap was Disney and the way they used their characters in their amusement parks.

Through a friend in Los Angeles, Mechem was able to meet Roy Disney for lunch to discuss the amusement park industry. "We had a lovely lunch; I asked him a lot of questions. And he was most encouraging about the amusement park business even though he knew that anything we might do would be a regional park, not a full year-round park. He liked the business and he explained why he liked the business.

As we were leaving, I said, ‘Mr. Disney, is there anything we haven’t touched on?’ He smiled and said, ‘You know, it’s ironic that you would come out here and ask me about the amusement park business, because you have the finest small amusement park in America right in your backyard, Coney Island! It was the first park that my brother Walt and I visited while we were starting to think about going into the park business. You ought to go back and buy that park and use that as your springboard to go bigger if you choose.’

And wouldn’t you know it? Now Coney Island was asking Taft about a possible merger!

TAFT BROADCASTING IS CONVINCED

Following Rogers’ and Wachs’ meeting at the Netherland Plaza, Rogers asked Gary to meet with him and Mechem at Cincinnati’s renowned Maisonette Restaurant. Mechem and Wachs had not previously met, so Wachs knew he had to introduce something to fully persuade him to merge Coney Island with Taft Broadcasting. The Six Flags parks were bought out by a company called Great Southwest Corporation. Their stock was going through the roof because of these parks. I went down with a stockbroker friend of mine, and I got all the numbers for the Great Southwest Corporation.

About halfway through the lunch I said, ‘Charlie, let me show you the financial success of the Six Flags parks which were acquired by the Great Southwest Corporation located in Dallas, Texas.’ I showed him the financials; the graphs were going like this [upward]. He picked it up and looked at this, and he backed up, almost knocked over a waiter! I knew at that moment Kings Island was born. They were going to do it. The vaccination had taken.

One obstacle remained—Charles Sawyer. Luckily, Sawyer and Mechem had previously worked together in the same law firm. When Mechem asked about Sawyer, Wachs said, ‘He very well may have a change of heart [because of Fess Parker], but he doesn’t know I’ve been talking to you.’ Charlie said, ‘I'll take care of Mr. Sawyer. I know Mr. Sawyer, let me talk to him.’ I said, ‘Great!’ The next thing I know, I get a phone call from Charles Sawyer. ‘Gary, come down to my office. We’ve got to call some banks! We’ve got to stop Fess Parker! We can’t let him do this deal!’

Sawyer had many connections in Cincinnati. He knew everybody, he knew bankers, Gary reveals. Now he became a great asset on our side of the fence because he could go to banks and say, ‘Hey, we’re doing this thing with Taft Broadcasting, we’ve got Coney Island behind us, we’re going to do a theme park.’ So he literally ended Fess Parker.

And so the noble, crazy big idea of moving a park had finally taken root. Throughout the holiday season of 1968 and into the beginning of 1969, Coney Island and Taft Broadcasting negotiated terms of the merger while determining the location for the new park.

There were really only two options, explained Charlie Mechem. We knew that it had to be on an interstate to have the egress and ingress necessary. [Interstate] 75 even then was crowded, clustered, it still is! 71 had virtually nothing between Montgomery and this area. We wanted to get far enough out so that we could acquire the land at a price that wasn’t formidable. We tried to buy in too close; couldn’t do that.

Another issue that arose was the amount of acreage. Once again, a memory from the Roy Disney-Charlie Mechem meeting came flooding back. Mechem remembered, One of the things he [Roy] told us when we met was, ‘One bit of advice: figure out how much land you need and then buy five times as much. We didn’t do that in Anaheim and we’ve regretted it ever since.’ So when we went looking for land for Kings Island, we ended up buying over 1600 acres. We associated ourselves with a really wonderful man named George Henkle of the real estate firm Henkle-Schueler. George Henkle was one of the most delightful and skillful men I’ve ever met, and he managed to acquire those 1600 acres for us without one leak at all, which made it a lot easier.

The two companies finally settled on a massive parcel of land twenty miles north of Cincinnati in Kings Mills, a town within Deerfield Township in Warren County.

Dennis Speigel, the assistant park manager for Coney Island at the time, recalled, "When I saw the land for the first time, actually Gary Wachs and I went out to look at the land and walk it and it was a cornfield! Just open space. Nothing there. There was a road [Columbia Road] that went right through the middle of [what would be] the parking lot at that time. He and I went out there, we walked the park, and we said, ‘Hey, this would be a great place for the Eiffel Tower, this would be a great place for The Racer. Went back in the backside of the property and found this big gorge and we said, ‘Wouldn’t that be wonderful, take the train across that gorge?’ That day, that’s about as far north as I'd ever been! Twenty-six miles outside of the city."

We had a lot of work to do on the site acquisition because there were a lot of parcels, said Dudley Taft, vice president of corporate development for Taft Broadcasting at that time. It was mostly one parcel that was controlled by a real-estate guy in Lebanon, George Henkle. We actually acquired part of that for stock and then had to pick up the other pieces. We had one holdout we finally were able to get just before the park opened which was right in the middle of the parking lot.

With the merger details and location of the park ironed out, it was now time to officially unveil the plans to the public.

BUILDING A NEW THEME PARK

On March 28, 1969 Lawrence Rogers and Charles Mechem of Taft Broadcasting and Ralph Wachs and Charles Sawyer of Coney Island announced the new park in a joint press conference. Plans called for an entire leisure-time complex that will combine a giant, family-oriented amusement park with the recreational use of the natural beauties of the woods, hills, and streams of the area. Wachs assured everyone that Coney Island would continue to operate as usual for the next two years while the new park was developed.

While the presentation indicated that Coney and Taft would be working together on the new park, Taft Broadcasting publicly announced that they would be purchasing Coney Island outright on April 21, 1969. The deal reached by both companies was that Taft would acquire all assets of Coney for $6.5 million in Taft Broadcasting stock; the sale was completed July 14. Even though a new company now owned Coney Island, all of the staff at the park remained the same. Taft Broadcasting almost immediately began using their new asset, including filming portions of the Hanna-Barbera Banana Splits television show at the park.

Meanwhile, planning of the new amusement park had begun. My father…turned to me and said, ‘Alright, you’ve been pushing this thing for four years,’ Gary recalls. ‘Now I want you to get out of Coney Island, you get your group together, you get this concept settled. You get architects, you get engineers, you get out there and build this damn thing and we’ll run Coney Island in 1970 and 1971.’ And figuratively speaking he said, ‘I don’t want you back here! I want you on that job!’ I said, ‘Yes sir, we’re doing it!’

With Gary Wachs named general manager of the new theme park, he and his Coney Island team would meet throughout the rest of 1969 to fully hammer out the new concept. We had a pretty smart group and it was imperative to have Kings Island conceived by operators laying out the conceptual part of the park. Crowd flow, queue lines, all of these things, and then after we got it the way we wanted it from an operational point of view, we called in the architects for the window dressing. That was very important. Six Flags didn’t do it that way.

Planning the park was a lot of fun, a lot of meetings! according to Dennis Speigel, who was now the assistant general manager for the new park. We had a lot of meetings with that team of sixteen guys [Coney Island officials], a lot of it was seat of the pants. We were working with a couple of local architecture and engineering firms, Savage, Shepalear and Schulte was one of the engineering firms. Dusty Daniels was our architect. And then as we were planning International Street, it just needed more pop, more oomph. And Gary brought in a fellow by the name of Bruce Bushman, and his father was a very famous silent movie star in the 20s, Francis X. Bushman. But Bruce Bushman was the one who, we had an idea and a conception for International Street, but he’s the one who solidified it and brought it together for us.

Charley Flatt, the director of the Sunlite Pool, would be the project manager for the new park’s construction, serving as the liaison between Coney and the general contractor, C.V. Maescher.

Developing the new park meant fleshing out Gary Wachs’ original four themed areas into fully immersive environments with rides and attractions.

A very early sketch by Gary Wachs of the layout for the new park. Courtesy of Gary Wachs.

INTERNATIONAL STREET

I went to Europe in 1963, and I became so impressed with what I saw…it was just beautiful, Wachs remembers. "Then I saw the real Eiffel Tower, and I saw these fountains around the tower...I took hundreds of slides…I visited Tivoli Gardens, the oldest amusement park in the world. I went to Oktoberfest in Munich. I was smitten with Europe. So I knew we wanted International Street."

In particular, Gary was impressed with what he called the Three F’s: flags, flowers, and fountains. All over Europe. Flags, flowers, fountains, it was just beautiful. After his trip to Europe, Wachs immediately began integrating these ideas into Coney Island park, including adding flags of many countries and a fountain on the midway. For the new park’s entrance, multinational buildings would sport the flags of their country, surrounding a long fountain (inspired by the Fountain of Warsaw in Paris) ensconced by lush landscaping.

The magnificent Royal Fountain. Photo from the 1978 employee yearbook. Courtesy of Perry Denehy.

Taking a page from Disneyland, the park would have a visual weenie (a Walt Disney term meaning something that draws your attention) serving as the centerpiece and icon of the park. For the new Coney, it would be a 331-1/2 foot, ⅓ scale replica of the Eiffel Tower.

Originally, Wachs had wanted the Eiffel Tower at Coney Island to replace the Lost River boat ride. There was a company in Pittsburgh called American Bridge, Wachs recalled. "They were famous for building big bridges around the country. I'm thinking sort of erector sets, bridges and Eiffel Towers. Obviously, I had a million pictures of the original Eiffel Tower in Paris. I worked my way up on these phone calls, and I got a vice president on that phone and told him what we’re doing. He’s in Pennsylvania and he’s never heard of a theme park, you know. I'll never forget, he said, ‘Son, we don’t build towers. We build bridges.’ That was the end of that conversation!"

Still, Wachs wanted an Eiffel Tower for Coney Island. "We had some connections with ride people in Europe. There was a company in Europe called Intamin AG, and it was run by a guy named Reinhold Spieldiener. I called him up and said, ‘We need an Eiffel Tower. A ⅓ scale Eiffel Tower.’ Intamin said sure, they could do that. Yet, In the back of my mind, I knew that was wrong. We didn’t want to build it in Coney! We wanted to move, we wanted to get out of there." So it was put on hold and repurposed for the new park.

Throughout development, many attraction ideas were either scrapped or relocated to different areas. The kiddie Turnpike attraction was relocated to the Happy Land of Hanna-Barbera, while a building representing England was scrapped altogether. A German beer garden and an Intamin Drunken Barrels attraction would later become a fully fleshed-out themed area, Oktoberfest.

The Hanna-Barbera characters on International Street. Courtesy of Tom Kempton.

THE HAPPY KINGDOM OF HANNA-BARBERA

The idea of using Hanna-Barbera characters in theme parks a la Disney was one of the main reasons behind Taft Broadcasting’s initial desire to build a park. So naturally the children’s area would be themed to the Hanna-Barbera intellectual property. Initially named the Happy Kingdom of Hanna-Barbera, it became Happy Land of Hanna-Barbera by late 1971. We had a children’s land in Coney Island; it was called the Land of Oz, but it was nothing like Hanna-Barbera, Gary explained. But I knew even back in Coney days the Land of Oz was very popular. People could take their children there, watch them ride the rides, have a great time. Hanna-Barbera was a huge extension of that. It was a good fit, a good merger, a good corporate fit.

Many rides from the Land of Oz at Coney Island would be relocated to the new property, although re-themed. Galaxi, a coaster added to Coney Island in 1970 with the intent of moving it to the new park, was originally slated for this area. When Oktoberfest was developed, the coaster was moved there instead. A planned Hanna-Barbera carousel would not become a reality at the park until 1982.

The star attraction of the Hanna-Barbera section would be a dark ride called the Enchanted Voyage. What we wanted was something like [It’s a] Small World, only built around the Hanna-Barbera characters, recalled Dennis Speigel. We created this layout of this ride that went back and forth and around through the channel in a flume boat, a big flume boat actually. The story was going to be about the cartoon characters who live in the television. So originally, when you went into that building, it had like a television screen with ‘rabbit ears’ on it.

Speigel became the liaison between the park and Hanna-Barbera. "I was going back and forth to California, and we were working on the dark ride and Bill [Hanna] dropped by. ‘What are you doing this weekend?’ ‘Well, I'm just here to work in the studio.’ ‘Why don’t you come out on the boat with